Building the ultimate Lego car

With more than 2,000 pieces to assemble, the Lego Technic Unimog is no mere
toy, as Chris Knapman discovered.

By Chris Knapman, video by Henry Richards

3:05PM GMT 18 Nov 2011

Let’s get one thing straight: the Lego Unimog is not a toy. It is an engineering project, or possibly even a work of art. At one-twelfth the size of the real thing, it’s also the biggest Technic model ever, a point that becomes abundantly clear when I crack open the box to be greeted by a dozen clear plastic bags of bits and no fewer than five instruction manuals. It crosses my mind that this is probably more than you get in a real Unimog, the go-anywhere commercial vehicle that turns 60 this year.

“Oh well,” I think, “if 11 to 16-year-olds can do it, then so can I.”

So begins the process of spilling £145 worth of tiny plastic pieces all over the table. There are a lot of pieces to spill here, too: 2,048 of them, in fact, although from where I’m sitting most don’t resemble the Lego I knew and loved. Where are the flat white “fourers” and the thin red “sixers”? Instead, there are so many cogs, pipes and rods that I might as well be building a washing machine.

Any concerns about the Unimog’s lack of authenticity evaporate the moment I click the first stud into place. Since forming its first bricks in 1949, Lego (which in Denmark, where it was invented, means “play well”) has fuelled millions of imaginations, inspiring countless youngsters to dream of life as an astronaut, pirate, town planner, et al. I was no exception, and the tactile sense of snapping those bricks together brings happy memories flooding back.

I begin with the rear differential, followed by the gears that will eventually control the winch and rear crane, but it’s not the work of a moment. It’s not that I’m building particularly slowly per se, nor that the instructions are unclear, but rather that there are just so many pieces. This first section alone consists of 347 bits and takes literally hours of positioning fiddly studs, bricks and rods into place. Given that I have allocated just four hours on a Friday afternoon to build the whole thing, this is not good news.

Next, I insert the first of the pneumatic pumps which, in this model, work in conjunction with an electric motor to operate the crane. It’s terrifically complicated, and one can’t help but admire the kind of mind that: a) designs something like this, and then, b) writes a manual that is able to convey to a teenager how it all goes together.

With the build approaching five hours I move on to the front subframe, but any notion of finishing in one sitting is fading fast. My lower back is burning from the constant leaning and stretching to search for pieces, and I can sense the fun slipping from what is turning into my own personal Everest. But, despite the advancing hours, it’s almost impossible to stop. “Just one more instruction” turns into “just one more page” as if some kind of Lego addiction is taking hold.

Right on queue there’s a loud knock on the door of my impromptu workshop, which just so happens to double as the Telegraph’s photography studio. Outside, a queue of angry, camera-wielding men has formed, wondering what on earth could be so important to put their room out of action all afternoon. I proudly lift a chassis crammed with gears and cogs, and await the compliments. “Is that all you’ve managed?” says one, while another kindly suggests that his "10-year-old son could have built that quicker than you.” I leave for the weekend, downhearted and defeated.

And yet by by the time I return to the build on Monday morning wild horses couldn’t drag me away. All weekend I've been preoccupied with Lego-related thoughts, reliving the satisfaction of the wheel hubs snapping into place, and telling anybody who will listen about how precisely machined the numerous little red rods must be for each and every one to slide into its home so snugly. Back in the zone, instruction manuals three, four and five pass in a blur of orange bricks and long blue pins, as well as a load of other bits that must have been invented sometime between my 17th birthday and now.

It doesn’t feel like long before the Unimog is up on four wheels, its cab in place. But the clock tells a different story: another two hours have passed. The final stages take just as long, and involve building the crane and winch, both controlled via the motor and a series of switches and levers for the hydraulics.

After a total build time of nine-and-a-half hours, I lock them into place with four of the most satisfying “clicks” to ever reach a human ear then sit back to marvel at my creation. And it really is marvellous, too, not just for its sheer size (at 56cm [1ft 10in] bumper to bumper, it will require significant space on the mantelpiece), but for how intricate it is. Underneath you can see that it uses portal axles for superior ground clearance, just like the real thing. And the claw, when operated skilfully, can actually be used to pick things up. Even now it’s finished, there are still hours of entertainment in these blocks.

The Unimog is to toys what its life-size relation is to cars. Bigger, meaner and altogether more complicated. Take it on at your peril.